Salary figures available through the online tracking site Legistorm.com show Akin paid his 14-person staff nearly $400,000 in the final quarter of 2012. That’s twice as much as the $200,000 quarterly payroll that Akin averaged through the rest of the year.

Former Akin communications director Steve Taylor said Monday that the bonus essentially was a separation package for staffers who lost their jobs because of the Republican congressman’s defeat by Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.

Taylor said Akin’s staff had a rough final few months. He said staffers were inundated with hateful messages by people upset by Akin’s remark that women’s bodies had ways of avoiding pregnancy in what Akin described as “legitimate rape.”